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Today’s post is about one of my favorite images, Nature’s Watercolor. We have a 16 x 20 canvas printed with today’s featured image hanging in a bedroom in our apartment and last week end this same image sold twice in a Christmas Market in Florence, Alabama (USA) as matted prints.

Not only am I drawn to the muted, serene colors in this image but I also remember capturing the scene during one of our boat rides on the Jourdan River in Hancock County Mississippi. The Jourdan is a tidal river along the Mississippi Gulf Coast and its brackish waters flow first into the Bay of Saint Louis and then into the Gulf of Mexico.

Spending time on the bleached white sandbars along the Jourdan River was one of my favorite things about living in Bay Saint Louis and boating on that river. There are several bridges that cross the river including one that carries traffic on Interstate 10.

The actual support posts for this bridge can be seen in the upper left of the photograph with water reflections running in between them. The pink and gray colored posts running through the middle of the photograph are reflections on the surface of the water of the real support posts.

This photograph was taken shortly after sunset allowing the soft muted colors of the sunset’s afterglow to be reflected from the sky to the water’s surface.

The resulting image projects a rather abstract picture with soft muted colors resulting in a serene scene resembling a watercolor painting. All of this beauty was created naturally and I was blessed to view it and preserve it for others to enjoy.

When I suggested that we visit the Official Alabama Renaissance Faire my husband asked me what to expect. Neither of us had ever been to one of these festivals but I had seen images on television and in print. Thinking that I knew what these fairs were all about I told him that the exhibits and characters would be representative of ages past (mostly the 1300s or1400s through the 1600s).

After entering Wilson Park in downtown Florence, Alabama we came upon the main stage area where characters were dressed as this year’s Queen, Queen Consort and Royal Steward and Herald. The Queens were seated while eating a snack. The Royal Steward stood watch over the two of them.

We passed the stage area and strolled through the park passing vendors, demonstrations and costumed characters.

There were Blacksmiths demonstrating their work, musicians, Belly Dancers and an entire block of food vendors lined up on one of the streets surrounding the park.

Almost reaching the food vendors we saw a booth where the vendors were selling pointy ears. We had already passed several visitors trying to put them on over their own ears. My husband turned to me and said, “What’s with the ears?”

It’s a little embarrassing to admit this, but I had to tell him that I didn’t know. Then I saw the Fairies! Two costumed young ladies dressed up as fairies and yes, they were wearing those pointy ears.

Would you dress up as a fairy and wear those pointy ears if you were attending a Renaissance Faire? Please answer in the comment section.

Today’s blog post is the second in a series about our visit to the 2023 Alabama Renaissance Faire. Last week’s post was about the gentleman portraying the Italian astronomer Galileo. This week’s post is about a gentleman acting as a wizard. Or perhaps he is an actual wizard?

When researching the history of wizards I came across more than one image of this same gentleman. At first I thought it might be different men but wearing the same costume. But it seems that this man can be recognized by his gaze as well as his costume. That’s why I wondered if this man is an excellent actor or an actual wizard.

Just what is a wizard? There are many synonyms for the word as well as several definitions. Dictionaries agree on the most common definitions of a magician or sorcerer or a person of amazing skill or accomplishment. Synonyms include medium, fortuneteller, occultist, seer, witch, warlock, as well as magician and sorcerer.

Let’s consider the definitions and synonyms that pertain to the Renaissance period in history.

Before the Renaissance, which is generally described between the 14th and 17th Centuries, magic was considered witchcraft and had a very negative connotation. However, during the 15th and 16th Centuries attitudes and beliefs about magic were changing.

This attitude change can be realized in the writings of the time. In Medieval times magic was written about mainly as fantasies and fictional activities. However, during the Renaissance magic was seen and written about as a more complex issue that could explain things that science could not, a form of hidden knowledge that could be found in rituals and writings.

A few authors that highlight this change in attitude include C.S. Lewis, Spencer, Chapman and even Shakespeare. Pico della Mirandola, an Italian nobleman and philosopher, studied under a Rabbi who insisted that the study of magic was an important stage in one’s intellectual and spiritual education.

Do crystals have magical powers as the wizard believes when he holds it out for me to view? Will his hooded cape protect him from the evil that may exist where he ventures? Is he a real magician or an actor costumed as a Renaissance Wizard?

I don’t know what the answers are to the questions above. What I do know is that this gentleman spotted me taking pictures at the Renaissance Faire in Florence, Alabama and struck a pose. He then held that pose until I put my camera down at which time he turned and slowly walked off.

There will be a few more blog entries about our visit to the Alabama Renaissance Faire in the coming weeks. Be sure to bookmark this site to read those entries and find links to the accompanying images.

Be sure and share you Renaissance Faire experiences in the comment section.

The official Alabama Renaissance Faire is held each October in Florence, Alabama (USA). The city was named after Florence, Italy, considered one of the cultural centers of the historic Renaissance period and where many believe the Renaissance Period actually began.

In the summer of 1987 city leaders and educators in the Alabama city planned the first festival to take place during the school year as an educational fair. It was the next year that the State Senate and House passed a bill that designated Florence as the state’s official renaissance fair city.

The fair was originally to showcase the Italian Renaissance culture but has since become a festival like many other Renaissance Fairs that includes Scottish, English and Modern Sci-Fi elements.

One of the first costumed characters that we met when we attended this year’s fair recently was the gentleman dressed as Galileo, an Italian astronomer, engineer and physicist born in 1564.

Galileo entered the University of Pisa to study medicine but soon changed his study to mathematics. Although he never finished his degree he was chair of mathematics at two different universities.

He revolutionized both astronomy and biology with his inventions that included compasses and improved telescopes with balances as well as microscopes. He also discovered several celestial bodies.

Galileo led an interesting and controversial life. In 1633 he was summoned before the Roman Inquisition and lived the last nine years of his life under house arrest.

This modern Galileo may have been the first character that stopped and posed for me but he certainly wasn’t the last. The people who dress up and roam around Wilson Park during the festival seem to enjoy playing their part and are more than happy to stop and pose whenever they spy someone with a camera!

Continue to visit my blogs and web site in the coming weeks to view and learn about several other characters that I photographed that day.

Have you attended a Renaissance Faire in your hometown or other city? If so, please use the comment section to share your experience.

Technically we don’t have a backyard. We live in an apartment complex and have a back patio. Beyond the patio is a narrow area of grass and then a privacy fence. Beyond the fence there is a vacant field and a wooded area on two sides of that field.

The image that I posted this week for the 52 Week Art Challenge (Theme: The World Outside) was a photograph of an American Sycamore tree that grows along the wooded area at the end of the vacant field beyond the privacy fence. I had previously posted a photograph of that tree with snow covering its branches. This week the tree’s leaves had turned yellow and reddish orange as the cooler weather brought fall colors to many trees and shrubs in the area.

One of the meteorologists on the weather channel had stated that the fall colors in New England were muted this year. People who planned their vacation to view or photograph New England’s famous autumn foliage were disappointed that the changing leaves were not a brilliant show this year.

We found muted colors among the mountains in Tennessee and North Carolina last week, too. A trip to visit family took us up and over the Appalachian Mountain range in those states and although trees were sporting fall colors the hues were muted rather than the usual bright shades. Like those vacationers in New England I had hoped to capture many photographs of trees full of brilliantly colored leaves.

Once again, as is true very often in life, I only had to look in my own backyard (poetically speaking) to find brilliantly colored leaves on an American Sycamore tree!

How often have you searched far and wide for beauty or excitement to end up finding what you were looking for right in your own backyard?

Please feel free to share that experience in the comment section below.

As many of you already know, the past few weeks have found me experimenting with different settings on my camera. You also know that it has been a frustrating experience for me.

However, even though I will need to continue to experiment, practice and learn if I want to get good results “straight out of the camera”, there are many times that I can get acceptable results with software processing and manipulation.

This became clear to me as I uploaded the photographs that were taken in September of my neighbors Starfish Flower into my photography software program. Those photos were taken on different days over a period of two weeks. Many photos were taken with different settings, with different lighting and in different weather conditions.

I went through all of the photographs and culled the very dark or blurry ones out of the mix deleting them instantly. After picking out six photos that looked decent I started processing them.

I found that some of those images only needed a little contrast to make them more appealing. All of them needed to be cropped, some more than others.

In the end I was left with six images that were inserted into a collage that was not only acceptable but gave me good results.

Now, if only I can remember this when I’m experimenting then my frustration might be at a much lower level.

Please comment and share a time when you learned not to get frustrated because you remembered that the end result was going to be a good one.

While taking photographs of the sky on a partly cloudy day, I started seeing mystical creatures being formed!

This was not the first time that I have witnessed animals appearing in the sky disguised as clouds.

Going through my photography archives, especially the oldest CDs there are hundreds of pictures of the sky with clouds. These are photos that were taken in adulthood.

Evidently I have not outgrown the practice of looking up, noticing and studying cloud formations. Actually I hope I never do outgrow that habit.

Pareidolia is the scientific name for seeing or hearing objects or words in patterns or images that aren’t really there. For example, seeing animals or faces in clouds, on rocks or other material objects is pareidolia. It can also mean hearing messages in musical compositions.

This phenomenon has been seen and written about in art. Leonardo da Vinci wrote in his notebooks that it would be a useful device for painters. Salvador Dali intentionally used pareidolia in his works, more often than not using faces.

In architecture, building details have been designed to cast shadows that will resemble people or animals, such as several mosques in Turkey.

The Shroud Of Turin is likely the most famous example of pareidolia known around the world. Not only does the shroud have the image of the crucified Jesus Christ but words and symbols have also been seen on the shroud as it has been studied.

Pareidolia has even found itself in literature. Hamlet has a conversation with Polonius about what he saw in the clouds. Was it a camel, a weasel or a whale?

Pareidolia. A scientific word. A scientific explanation for the phenomenon of seeing or hearing objects in or on other objects.

Honestly, I only want to believe it’s the best of our imagination and I’m glad that my imagination is still as strong when I gaze up at the sky as it was in my childhood.

Has adulthood weakened that childhood practice of imagining in your life or is your imagination as strong as ever? Be sure and share the answer to that question in the comment section.

Week Six of the 52 week Art Challenge (The World Outside) contained an image of a morning sky. We live on a hill surrounded by tall trees. Our sunrise is actually about 45 minutes to an hour later than the official sunrise. The morning the photograph was taken for Week 6 was cloudy but not total clouds covering the entire sky. The clouds were thick and dark in the middle and hanging around the horizon.

As the sun was rising above the tree tops, the clouds were covering the actual orb but bright light was escaping around the edges of the clouds and into the spaces between them.

The scene was very dramatic and the camera was able to record the drama.

One of my fellow Fine Art America members stated that the image held a motivational message: every cloud has a silver lining.

I didn’t think of that when I was capturing the scene or even when I was lightly processing the photograph. I could only see the beauty and drama that unfolded that morning.

I am not a morning person. So it really was a “silver lining” that I was up and dressed and outside with my camera while witnessing such an amazing sight. Capturing that scene with my camera allows me to experience that beauty many times over as well as being able to share that awesome morning sky with others.

Be sure to comment and share your “clouds with a silver lining”.

Last week I talked about experimenting with my camera but not using a notebook to write down the different settings I was using. I have been taking pictures for the One Image A Week For 52 Weeks Personal Art Challenge that was using the theme The World Outside.

This week I also participated in a three day challenge in which the theme was Bread. All of the photographs for that challenge were taken indoors. I was able to write down the different settings I used without having to lug around a notebook because there was paper and pencil right there on my desk!

Having access to paper and pencil did not, however, make those photo sessions any less frustrating. The desired effect in changing the depth of field without adding noise (like grainy film) and getting the light exposure right all at the same time still eludes me.

The good part of this short challenge was the bread! There’s very little bread bought and eaten in our place even though it’s one of my husband’s favorite foods. You can image how elated he was when we went grocery shopping and I visited the deli to buy three different types of bread. He was so appreciative that he picked up some Baklava for me before we left that department.

I’m sure we both gained an extra pound or two this week eating a loaf of Banana Nut Bread, a French Baguette, Cornbread and of course the Baklava!

Considering the frustration of the completed challenge, each pound I may have gained is worth every single bite of that Baklava.

Your thoughts are always welcomed and encouraged if you’d like to comment.

If you have been following my blog posts about the 52 Week Personal Art Challenge you may remember the notebook suggestion. The suggestion was to carry a notebook and write down what camera settings you are using when learning how to use the camera off the Auto program.

In the past I would often take a quick shot of the ground when changing from one setting to the next. Since I wanted to try more than two settings and my camera was on a tripod I decided to put my hand in front of the lens and take a shot of that. Keeping my changes in order from Macro (close-up) to the Program mode to the Aperture mode and back to the beginning Macro mode I thought that I would be able to know what setting I had used when looking at the thumbnails on my computer. It was a matter of always using the same order of settings.

However, I also experimented with the focus and totally forgot when and how I had changed those settings!

Did I get any photographs that I could process and upload? Yes.

Did I get many more photographs that were pure crap to be deleted immediately? Yes.

Did I learn anything from this week’s experimenting? Yes.

Lesson learned: take a notebook and write down when you change settings of any kind if you want to learn what settings work under certain circumstances (like lighting or wind, etc.).

Because, believe me, there is no way to remember what settings you’ve used on all 100+ photos that are taken each day with seven days in a week!

Until next week enjoy another Hibiscus image featured in today’s post.

Be sure to comment below with any thoughts or suggestions.